


Glitter and Gold

by coxorangepippin



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: But his adulthood isn't!, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and mild angst, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF, Victor's childhood is sad, new year fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 05:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13207209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coxorangepippin/pseuds/coxorangepippin
Summary: Victor and Yuuri had very different experiences of New Year's Eve growing up.Here are two New Year's Eves that they spent apart, and one which they spent together.A canon-compliant oneshot.(Title is taken from a song by Barns Courtney)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier.'" - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Yuuri Katsuki did not, traditionally, pay much attention to New Year’s Eve. When he was a child, he remembered the parties his parents had held at the inn; he had been allowed to stay up late, and to try the canapés that were usually reserved for the grown-ups. He remembered being patted on the head by hands that he didn’t recognise, his parent’s friends; their glittering rings and jewel coloured clothes blurred with the twinkling of lanterns and the fireplace in his memory, hazed as though with the steam from the onsen. He remembered Mari playing cards with him while he tried to stay awake until midnight, and although he didn’t remember her carrying him to bed when he inevitably fell asleep at about eleven o’clock, he knew that she had done so every year when he awoke to the dawn of the new year safe and comfortable in his own bed.

He remembered the sense on that first day of those childhood New Years, when the morning was cold and bright, and his bed was warm and soft, that the future was slightly closer than it had been. It hovered ahead of him, still just far enough away that he couldn’t make out the details, its form hazy and undefined. The sense had never lasted long; there were always classes, ballet, ice-skating, friends, which burst through that sense of indefinable possibility with their tangible reality, their bright and present colours making that pale and possible future seem less and less interesting as the year went on.

 

************

 

The first year he was away from home, in Detroit, Yuuri expected to stay in alone for New Year’s Eve. Phichit had flown out that morning. His parents weren’t there to throw a party, and Yuuri himself was too shy to invite any of his tentatively-made friends to his and Phichit’s apartment to celebrate the ending of the old year. It felt too personal, somehow, when so much had changed.

He had moved across continents, he had been given permission to pursue his dream, encouragement and training; this year had set his life on a new path, and he didn’t feel he could say goodbye to it in the presence of people that hadn’t been with him until his paths diverged.

Yuuri felt he could see his other future hovering just a few steps behind him, as a smoky apparition overlaying the pale blue of the ice rink, and the dull white of his college papers; the ghost of what might have been, what might still be if he failed. Yuuri saw himself in Hasetsu, growing up, growing old; the onsen and its steam a permanent presence, Mari and he running the family business as his parents grew too old. It wasn’t that Yuuri didn’t want that future, but…

Yuuri curled up on the slightly battered sofa in his living room, and dragged his favourite red blanket around his shoulders. Outside, it was too cold for snow; the dark air seemed sharp and bladed, its clarity painful to breathe. But the apartment was warm, and Yuuri could feel sleep settling heavy in his limbs already, despite the fact it was still early. This wouldn’t do; there was no Mari to carry him to bed when he fell asleep early in Detroit.

In an effort to stay awake, Yuuri turned on the television to the New Year’s Eve coverage, and gazed at the screen without really seeing it. His skates were in their battered blue bag by the door, his alarm set as always for six o’clock the next morning.

Yuuri ruminated, hands curled tightly into the blanket around his shoulders. Here, at the closing point of the year, his futures seemed closer together than usual, his dreams less substantial, his longing more painful. Yuuri sighed, pulling the blanket closer around him, and glanced across to where his skates lay waiting for him.

He still had access to that other future, the one which he was trying so desperately to make his own, bright and tempting and fragile as the ice which greeted him each morning. His feet, where they were propped up on the sofa, were bruised; his nails were blackened from a fall that he had had earlier that week, but Yuuri would chase his future on his bruised and bleeding feet until he couldn’t run anymore. Determination had never left him, even if his motivation had flagged on those cold mornings when his bed seemed so much more appealing than the bright white lights of the rink.

This time next year, Yuuri vowed to himself, he would be closer to his dream. He would be closer to the podium. Closer to skating on the same ice as….

Yuuri snorted at his own presumption, and tried to focus on the television. The reporter was talking, the camera panning outwards to show the crowds of people out in the city, all waving glowsticks and smiling so broadly that Yuuri had to smile in response. Many were holding hands, or had arms round each other’s shoulders; Yuuri tugged the blanket closer, and tried to feel the phantom touch of his family’s hands from thousands of miles away.

The door of the apartment clicked open.

And suddenly, Phichit was there, freezing cold but still warm, always so warm, his smile bright and his shoulders slumped with weariness. His flight had been cancelled; he would be staying an extra night. He slung his bags down, and collapsed onto the sofa, flinging an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders in place of the arms that Yuuri had been imagining, as though he knew. Yuuri was never sure how much Phichit knew about the things he didn’t say, or how much he had guessed.

He and Yuuri saw in the New Year like that, stretched out on their sofa, the warmth in their tiny apartment keeping the freezing air at bay.

 

**************

  
  
The first New Year Yuuri spent with Victor was unremarkable in many ways. They were in Hasetsu, visiting with Yuuri’s family for a precious few days between competitions; the Olympics were coming up, and both of them had been training hard, their bodies a kaleidoscope of bruises, their feet permanently bound up in layers of plasters.

When they had arrived, Hiroko had pulled both of them down into a tight hug, and said nothing but _welcome home_. Yuuri and Victor had spent the day in the onsen, resting tired muscles and restoring drained spirits; the steam had seemed to settle pleasantly in their brains, erasing tension with its persistent heavy warmth. Yuuri had quietly marvelled, as he always did, at Victor’s pale skin and flawless body; he knew it as well as his own now, down to each last unexpected freckle and scar. Victor had simply laid his head on Yuuri’s shoulder, the warm water lapping at his chin, and sighed through a smile. It was quiet; it was perfect.

That evening, Yuuri and Victor attended his parent’s party for seeing out the old year. The drinks which had been passed above Yuuri’s head as a child, forbidden and untasted, were now offered to him with a smile; the glasses winked in the light of the lanterns, and Yuuri’s ring glittered as he patted the heads of the Nishigori triplets, who had been bribed into good behaviour with the promise of staying up to see midnight. Victor’s ring glinted too, as he reached for Yuuri’s hand, bringing it to his mouth when he thought no one was looking, the moment as golden as the lantern-light. Then Yuuko was there, and Yuuri turned to hug her, and Victor was being drawn into a friendly and long-running argument with Minako and Nishigori about the benefits of ballet versus ice-skating for the triplets. 

Champagne burst sweet and bubbling across Yuuri’s tongue, bringing with it memories of a night which he had forgotten but which had set his life on a new path, one which he had thought was forever closed to him. He blushed very slightly, and looked across at Victor, who was laughing, his silver head thrown back and his smile heart-shaped and wide. Minako prodded Victor in the ribs, and Nishigori clapped him on the back; Yuuri guessed that he had taken Nishigori’s side in their skirmish.

The moment hung, suspended, as though in amber, held aloft by the bubbles of the champagne and the low hum of laughter. Yuuri felt as though the past year was a dream, one which he would one day wake up from; Victor was here, Victor was _his_. He remembered a cold night in Barcelona, on which a good luck charm had become a promise, a forever. He remembered an impersonal hotel room, which had witnessed a conversation which had almost cost him his happiness, his future. He remembered the feeling of his heart snapping cleanly in two. He remembered the final at Worlds, the spotlights which had blinded him, the cold medal in his hand, the warmth of Victor on his lips and in his arms, and the conviction that _here_ was his future, here was where his path truly began, though he would no longer be walking it alone.

He was brought back to the present by a hand on his waist, and a murmur in his ear, Victor’s silver hair falling across his vision. The rest of the room had gathered around the television, and the murmur of conversation had become an excitable buzz. Then there was a moment of silence, before everyone joined in for the countdown, voices raised in concert.

_Ten, nine…_

Victor’s hand was warm in his, their shoulders leaning comfortably together. Victor was laughing, counting down in Russian, as perverse as always. Yuuri smiled, and that ember which always burned in his heart these days flared brighter.

_Eight, seven…._

Yuuko and Nishigori had arraigned their triplets, who had managed to remain awake as Yuuri never had, and were laughing as they filmed everyone’s chanting. Yuuri smiled, and tried to remember to ask Yuuko for the video later; he wanted to send it to Phichit, far away in Thailand, with his own family. His first friend in Detroit, his best friend now, and the only person that Yuuri felt was missing from the evening. But he would see him soon; Phichit would be competing against him in a matter of weeks.

_Six, five…_

Mari prodded Victor in the shoulder, her face imperfectly fashioned into a frown, a badly-concealed smile threatening to break through at any moment at Victor’s wilful refusal to count down in Japanese. He remained steadfast for a few moments, lifting his nose in the air as though he hadn’t even noticed she was there, but then she stepped on his toe and he laughed, the sound warm, the vibrations running through his and Yuuri’s shoulders where they touched.

_Four, three, two…_

The lanterns twinkled, refracted through everyone’s raised glasses as the old year took its last breath. The room was warm, and Yuuri couldn’t ever remember feeling as though he belonged anywhere as much as he did in this moment, with his family, and his love, and his future just a breath away.

_One!_

And then Victor’s lips were on his, and all his thoughts melted away with their warmth. Yuuri felt Victor’s smile against his own, and they broke apart, foreheads still touching.

“Happy New Year, Yuuri,” whispered Victor, too quietly for anyone else to hear, and Yuuri saw the love and wonder blazing in his eyes, undimmed from the day that they had decided that their futures would be one and the same.

Yuuri smiled softly, and leaned forwards to kiss Victor again, hearing his family celebrating all around them.

Before their lips touched, he murmured quietly, “Happy New Year, Victor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Victor's New Years next; fair warning, they are SAD. At least until he meets Yuuri. And then they are never sad again.  
> (I'm sorry, I cannot defray any dental expenses from reading such tooth-rotting fluff)
> 
> Also major thanks to satbiym (https://archiveofourown.org/users/satbiym) for being a Genuine Angel and curing my writer's block; special New Year good vibes for you <3


	2. Chapter 2

The first New Year’s Eve that Victor remembered was in his parent’s house, when he was about seven. A different time, a different world.

It was cold in the town house, with its high ceilings and pale blue walls and white ceilings. Everything was elegant, pristine; decorations were hung perfectly straight in the many rooms, and endless vases of full-blooming roses were scattered tastefully in corners and on pedestals. The fires were not lit yet; they would only be lit an hour or so before the guests arrived, and then the house would finally lose its chill. For a few hours, at least. Until the guests left.

Victor had been banished to his room at about four o’clock in the afternoon, as soon as he had returned from practice, to allow the maids to finish the decorations without him causing a nuisance with his chatter and questions, always wanting to help, always causing a mess. He had been given new clothes for the evening, in his parent’s favourite shade on him; an ice blue shirt, with dark blue dress trousers. His nanny had combed his hair, and made sure that he looked smart enough to be presented downstairs, before she had kissed him on the forehead and left him alone in his bedroom.

The sky outside was dark, and the air in his room was chilly. Victor sat on his wide, canopied bed, ignoring the wrinkles this caused in his freshly pressed trousers, and kicked off his dress shoes. They hurt his feet; they were sore from a day spent at the rink, and the unsoftened leather pinched at the most painful spots. He looked up, into the long mirror that stood against his wall, outlined in curlicues of white cast iron.

His pale, pointed face looked back at him, perfectly complimented by the pale, starched lines of his new shirt. The cufflinks were probably diamond; he didn’t know, and he didn’t particularly care. His long hair was swept back in a neat and ruthlessly tight ponytail behind his head, the silver glittering in the dim light of his bedside lamp. Every inch the Nikiforov’s boy; not one hair out of place, not one speck of dust on his clothes.

Victor felt tears well up in his eyes. He pulled one strand of his long hair out of the ponytail, and let it sweep downwards across his face. He didn’t look much more like himself, but it was a start.

He impatiently dashed the tears out of his eyes, not wanting to be scolded for ruining the effect of his mother’s chosen colour scheme with a blotchy red face. There was a soft knock on his bedroom door, and one of the maids entered, her smile sympathetic.

“It’s time to go downstairs, Master Victor,” she said softly. She looked down to where Victor’s shoes lay kicked carelessly on the floor, and then looked back at Victor, who met her eyes and smiled slightly, his eyes just a little red.

She moved into the room, picked up the shoes, and rubbed the dust off them with her sleeve. She bent down and placed them back on Victor’s feet, lacing them carefully, loosening the laces slightly when he winced.

When she had finished, Victor stood up, and defiantly pulled the strand of hair across his face, making sure it was prominent enough. He braced himself, and squashed down his sadness, making it small and hard and cold, secreting it away in his heart for later that night when he had finished being charming and he could cry uninterrupted. He wished he was back at the rink, with Yakov, and his gruff voice and his warm encouragement and that one time he had ruffled Victor’s hair and-

_No. Not now._ Victor smiled at the maid, and allowed himself to be led down the wide staircase to the party, full of furs and diamonds and pleasantries, still chilly despite the roaring fires.

  

**************

 

When Victor was nineteen, and just beginning to capture the world in the storm that he intended to visit upon them, he spent New Year’s Eve alone with Makkachin, far from his parent’s house, far from dress shoes and furs.

He was happier than he had ever felt at this time of year before.

Victor’s apartment was his own, not his parent’s, earned with his own hard work. It was small, and it needed work, but the walls were a soft sage green and the sofa was red, and there was a vase of sunflowers on the table. In celebration of his freedom, Victor wore sweatpants, and an enormous old jumper with holes in the cuffs, his long hair bound behind his head in a messy ponytail, strands of it drifting across his face and down to his collarbones. He watched _The King and the Skater_ , and he ate Chinese food with chopsticks that he stuck in his ponytail when he had finished, and he didn’t wear any shoes at all, let alone dress shoes. Makkachin sprawled across him, warm and solid, and rested his head on Victor’s chest, whuffling occasionally when Victor moved.

Victor drank champagne at midnight.

He felt the old year fading behind him, the new one stretching out ahead, bright with promise and no obstacles blocking his way. He had his first golds; he was beginning to be spoken of as the future of figure skating. Victor knew he was. He had something that he hadn’t seen in anyone else; his body seemed to be made for this, and this alone. And Victor was going to run down that bright path of his future as fast as he could, leaving his beautiful and freezing childhood far behind him, drowning it in medals that his parents never wanted watched him win.

Victor reached over to the CD player beside him, and hit the play button, leaping up from the sofa. He could do this now; he could play loud music, and wear whatever he wanted, and eat food that his parents wouldn’t even have allowed through the door, because he had _earned_ it. He was creating his own life, day by day, by himself, and he didn’t need them.

Victor danced with Makkachin in his tiny living room, avoiding the table with practiced ease, leaping high enough for his hands to brush the low ceiling, as the energetic pop music blared from his CD player. He smiled, though no one was watching, and he held Makkachin’s paws as though they were real dance partners at one of his parent’s parties.

The CD finished, and the abrupt silence was broken only by Victor’s fast breathing and Makkachin’s heavy pants.

They both collapsed on to the sofa, and Victor laughed as Makkachin flopped down next to him. And then, suddenly, he was crying.

The new year took no notice, flowing across the world with the dawn, as high in his apartment block, Victor sobbed into his poodle’s fur.

 

***************

  
  
The first new year Victor spent with Yuuri, he felt the sadness that he had long ago compressed into something as hard and glittering as a diamond gradually crumbling into smoke, melting away in the warmth of the onsen.

The room was smaller than the ones his parents had held parties in, but it was warm, and the voices were not pleasantly modulated into polite disinterest, but loud, and raucous, and full of life. Children threaded between people’s knees, their feet not pinched by dress shoes, their hair disordered as they chased one another through the party with shouts of laughter. Lanterns glittered above his head, and through it all, Yuuri was at his side, constant and glowing.

Victor turned away from the conversation he was having with Nishigori for a moment, and looked across at Yuuri. His eyes were far away, as though remembering something; his dark hair shone in the soft light.

Love bloomed in Victor’s chest, constricting his throat. He looked down at the ring on his own hand, winking softly in the dim light, and in it he saw the promise of next year, and the year after, and the year after that. No more beginning the New Year alone with his ghosts, his only company the soft and chilled gold of his medals.

He looked at his watch, and saw that it was nearly time. He moved across to Yuuri, who was still lost in his thoughts, and slid a hand around his waist.

“Almost time, solnyshko,” he murmured into the soft shell of his hear. Yuuri came to himself, his eyes losing their distance, and he smiled at Victor. Victor felt his heart flutter, as it always did, and felt like the richest man in the world.

_Ten, nine…_

The countdown began behind him, and Victor wondered what his parents would have made of him if they could see him now, surrounded by love as he was. He missed them distantly, but the childhood longing for approval was something that the years had dulled to a very faint whisper. He felt Yuuri press closer against his side, and he wished that the crying child, in his beautiful cold bedroom, could know that all the love he was missing would one day be repaid countless times over.

_Eight, seven…._

Thoughts of his past stirred a perverse longing in Victor. He had never been allowed to stay for the duration of his parent’s parties; he had always heard the countdown from a distance, and had quietly joined in with the muted and polite cheers at midnight in the silence of his bedroom. He began counting down in Russian now, the language thick with nostalgia, finally where he was meant to be.

_Six, five…_

Victor pulled his mind from his memories, and allowed himself to be drawn into the present, the raised voices all around him making him smile wider than he had known was possible. Mari prodded him in the ribs, and Victor pretended not to notice. Mari stepped on his toe in response. He laughed, heart thick with emotion for this family that would soon become his.

_Four, three, two…_

Victor found his eyes drawn back, as they always were, to Yuuri. He was smiling softly, his eyes crinkled half shut in the way that made Victor’s heart stutter, his cheeks flushed from champagne. Victor vividly remembered the last time he had seen Yuuri drink it, the night that had changed his life; the night that had split open his locked and starving heart under the pressure of Yuuri’s hand, and driven him halfway across the world.

_One!_

Victor leaned forwards, and kissed Yuuri gently. He wanted to spend every New Year like this, with love on every side.

“Happy New Year, Yuuri,” he whispered, and drew back to look into Yuuri’s dark eyes. He felt the life and love that had been absent for so long blazing in his heart, thrumming through his veins.

Yuuri smiled at him, and Victor knew that this moment would be forever etched in his heart.

Yuuri leaned forwards to kiss him, and it was still a miracle that this was happening, that Yuuri was here, was his, and before their lips touched Victor thought that the adoration in his heart would melt him into a new shape entirely.

He leaned forwards to meet Yuuri’s lips, and in the breath before they touched, he felt the soft vibrations of Yuuri’s voice between them, murmuring “Happy New Year, Victor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you have it; it was the Fluffiest of Fluff, and I hope you can forgive me.
> 
> I just wanted to say to anyone reading this; thank you so much. This year was the year that I finally had the courage to post anything I'd written in a place where other people could read it, and every single word of encouragement has meant the entire world to me. I hope that the year ahead holds good things for each and every one of you.
> 
> Love always,
> 
> Pippin xxx


End file.
